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PH3NOmenon
As a dutiful forum lurker who thinks of himself as an amateur writer I thought I'd brighten your day with some fiction i still have laying around. Isn't it your lucky day?

I normally only write when I need an outlet. You know, stress, broken heart, that sort of thing. And since it's that time of year, (college exams for those that never knew the joy) I'm at it again. But instead of writing yet another short burst of random fiction, I thought I'd expand on what I still have laying around. The problem is, I can't pick one of 'em, so you fellas get to do that for me.

I don't know how much reaction this is gonna get, so the first story to receive 10 (15, 20, if it's close, but i doubt we'll get that far) votes gets some much needed loving.


Since i'm most familiar with SR4, that's where the stories are set. I do take a rather liberal amount of artistic freedom when writing so don't flog me to death if you spot an inconsistency.

Feel free to post any spelling errors you spot (native language: dutch), any advice you have (all amateur writers crave the stuff) or any thoughts on the stories (feedback ftw!)





Birth

The first thing he lost was his sense of time.

That wasn't too surprising considering the circumstances. He didn't know how long he had been hanging there since he had awoken. All he knew was that the puddle of blood at his feet had covered the entire base of his small cell a long time ago. If it wasn't for the small ripples his drops of blood caused in the deep grey square at his feet he would have sworn the floor had disappeared. He looked at it blankly... why wasn't it red? Damn that blue light. Where was it coming from anyway?

It hurt.

It was a feeble realisation at this point, but it did. It hurt. The restraints were cutting into his wrists, his weight pulling them ever deeper into his soft flesh. He felt the pain coarsing slowly through his arteries, reaching every part of his limp body. The liquid flowing from the wound at the back of his neck was warm, it even felt strangely comfortable. Well, he was hanging by his wrists in a cold metal cell no larger than the common bathroom stall illuminated by a sickening blue light, so maybe it felt comfortable by comparison.

The second thing he lost was the ability to tell dream from reality.

Fascinated, like a child watching a butterfly for the first time, he spent his time gazing at the display his blood was making at his feet. For a moment he could have sworn he could see something swim by in the dark puddle. He had been thinking about who would do this to him. There had been too many choices. During his career he had stepped on so many toes it almost came as a shock that nobody had gotten to him sooner. Sure he was good at what he did, but you can't run forever. Nobody can. If you try, you'll eventually slip up and fall down. Or run smack dab into a brick wall. Yeah, that second description felt more appropriate. For the life of him, and he meant that quite literally, he couldn't figure out which corp would want to get their payback like this. It didn't make sense. Aztech would be the closest match but the ritual sacrifices for their bloodmages were more... ritualistic, I guess.

If it really was a corp that was responsible then his teammates should be rescuing him any second now. He'd been saying that to himself for what seemed like days. Ofcourse, they could've been captured too. They could be thinking the exact same thing as he was right now. Feeling the same agony. Hoping for the same relief. A chorus of minds in unity, striving for the same thing. What power would that hold. What glorious force. What unstoppable fury. What undeniable strength.

What an odd thought.

Where had that come from?

The hum of the wireless mesh network that was so familiar to him was non-existant here. It's an odd sensation, an uncomfortable silence where once existed a soothing background noise, like moving to the suburbs when you're used to sleep right next to a highway. What he really missed though, was the Resonance. He hadn't felt the Resonance for so long. He had talked about this to a few people, but nobody really understood. After all, how many people had experienced it before the matrix crash? And how many of those were still alive today?

The Resonance pools were located deep within the old matrix, they were places where the data flowed freely. Where tranquility resides in a distilled form. You found peace there, and from that peace of mind grew strength and focus. You did not get addicted to the Resonance, after all; you don't get addicted to sitting by a warm fireplace with your relatives either. You don't get addicted to harmony. Unity. Serenity. Bliss. You didn't get addicted but dammit, the feeling of the gaping hole of its absence staring you in the face is worse than any withdrawal you'll ever face.

The pools had disappeared along with the rest of the old matrix. The dataflow had become wireless. And though he could now feel the familiar buzz of data flowing around him when he was walking around in the physical world, it just wasn't the same. It wasn't as intense, it wasn't as satisfying. The new generation of hackers didn't know the Resonance, they were happy manipulating their own shiny new world and they didn't need an outdated hasbeen like him to tell them about the days of yore. Ignorance is bliss. The bliss they took away from him. Sure, they'd call him "technomancer" with some amount of respect in their voice, but when it came right down to it they thought of him as inferior.

Out of desperation he tried to escape into the matrix again but he couldn't grasp on to anything. There was no signal nearby, he couldn't even feel the slightest bit of code. He was trapped. Trapped in his body, trapped inside this cell, trapped in a world void of all that was once so dear to him. He wanted to cry. He wanted to crumble down and hide in a corner, sobbing like a pile of human tragedy, crying his eyes out along with all the pain and misery. But he couldn't. All he could do was hang there. Hang above the dauntingly grey portal at his feet and listen to the slow dripping sound of his blood.

The realisation came to him as a shock. He should feel hungry or thirsty by now. The wound at the back of his neck should have closed by now. He should have died of bloodloss by now. Something should have happened by now. ANYTHING should have happened by now. If it didn't then he was going to die here. He'd die, hanging above grey nothingness in this desolate blue hell. He panicked, he didn't want to fade, he didn't want to disappear from this world, his mind started clawing around desperately for something to latch on to as it felt itself slipping away into the abyss below. Slowly he descended into madness, his feet submerging into the warm viscuous liquid by his feet. His mind now ravashing his brain, tearing out and discarding memories, thoughts, personality traits, searching for anything that would allow him not to cross over into the silent chaos he was already waist deep in. He couldn't find anything. Deeper and deeper he sank into the floor of his cell. It pulled at him. The last thing he felt was pure despair. Despair for which the reasoning had gone.

The third thing he lost, was his sanity.


The blue light had gone. So had his cell.

"This one didn't scream enough to show succesful conversion. Dispose of him." said a heavy, cold voice somewhere.




Endgame

Her leather fingerless gloves lay on the floor besides her. The metal wall felt uncomfortably cold against her back. Thoughtlessly her right hand reached into a pocket of her formfitting stealthsuit and emerged holding three chips. She had a few minutes, she figured she'd earned it. Getting into the facilty unseen had been a feat of luck and skill all by itself, now she just had to wait for that damned geek to do his part before the real fun started. A bitter smile showed itself on her lips as she carelessly flicked the chips through her fingers like mere bottlecaps. Better Than Life. It'd been a long time since that had actually meant anything.

The timer in her augmented field of vision was nervously counting down. As her sensory input blurred together in a single teeming mass, so did the numbers. The tripchip did its work. Her hard, cold evironnement had been replaced by vivid, euphoric implanted memories bound together by tangible feelings of delight and pleasure wrapped in non-existant colors that tasted faintly of strawberries. Her eyes rolled back into her skull, her body relaxed for a moment, then twitched violently to a rythm that could only be conceived by an insane dj. From this moment onward, until the chip burned itself out in the inconspiciuous datajack on the lower part of her neck, she'd be happier and more content than any metahuman had the godgiven right to.

The pleading, begging voices rolled off her like raindrops off a corperate exec's thousand nuyen umbrella. Slowly the shouts pooled on the granite floor around her bare feet, she watched them with interest as they were painstakingly inching closer to her wiggling toes. Cold and moist. The sensation raced up through the congested highways of her nervous system, passing her ankles, knees, shoulders and crashing into her brain like an out of control yamaha rapier slamming into a plasteel wall.

"WHAT!?!?", she blurted into her commlink as her body jerked upright, her voice filled to the brim with a trembling rage. "Welcome back to the land of the living." the voice of the elf on the other side of the com was smooth and prissy as always. "Would you mind terribly to start doing your damned job now? Time's a wasting, princess." She groaned as she got up. Time to get down to business. She tightened her hands around the custom-made grip of her predator as the water of the sprinkler system streamed down her face. With a touch of a button the door to the storage room slid open and she came out running. She replayed the briefing in her mind, slightly over a hundred meters of twisting corridors from here to the lab, non-essential personnel should have cleared out because of the alarm, two armed guards left by the door, one techwiz left in the lab copying the paydata onto an external drive to be escorted out by said two guards when complete, eighty-five meters and two flights of stairs to ground level, a blown up main gate and a bigass troll with a drekhot blazing minigun providing cover on her exit of the facility, her trusty rapier standing by for a quick retreat into the Z-zone of the country. In and out, smooth like her freshly waxed legs.

Intel was wrong. It always is. She would've expected it, if she hadn't obtained it herself this time. She let out a curse between her teeth.



It's a living

I have no knowledge of fear 'cause i'm here to do work.

He kept repeating the mantra. I have no knowledge of fear... he grazed the trigger of the heavy pistol with his finger. ...I'm here to do work. He stood up from his cover, rising up like a ghoul at dusk. His eyes held a grim determination that would have made death itself pause in its tracks. This proved to be true, as his assailant paused for a moment, with a look that conveyed a shock that went beyond surprise, straight into 'what the frag' and crossing over into 'oh hell no'. The last thing the poor slot saw was how the handcannon kicked back in the hands of his killer. Only once. The guard fell to the floor, the Ex-explosive bullet had entered his skull through his forehead and now a vast emptiness housed where just a split second before his thoughts had roamed freely.

"Surpressing fire is only as surpressing as you allow it to be." he spoke matter-of-factly.
Wounded Ronin
The first one is best because it has an underlying S&M theme.
emo samurai
First one is curiosest.
tisoz
The first because the main character going insane kind of wrote yourself in a corner.
Fortune
All of them! biggrin.gif
BishopMcQ
Tisoz--Some of my favorite characters are clinically insane, or on the road to recovery. Trying to come to terms with atrocities committed while under duress, or better yet atrocities everyone tells you that you committed but cannot remember and the struggles of true identity versus the post-modern ideal can lead to depth of character.

Phenom--I prefer the first one, though all three carry high levels of interest.
Backgammon
I liked Endgame. I was like "no! she's chipping in the middle of a run!" I thought it was way cool the way she thought she had earned the right for a quick btl. Very addict like. Which makes tons of sense for shadowrunners. We tend to always make uber cool runners that can handle anything, but honestly most shadowrunners SHOULD be really fucked up. smile.gif
Moirdryd
All three were very nicely done.

Personally I really enoyed It's a Living. Something about the character presented even in its briefness appealed. Very Doc Holiday in a way.
Sir_Psycho
For some-one with english as a second language, I think they're all great. I voted for Endgame, because the BTL angle is interesting as hell, and I identify with the stealthy characters.

Ideally, I'd like to read both Endgame and Birth.
underaneonhalo
QUOTE (Wounded Ronin)
The first one is best because it has an underlying S&M theme.

Seconded! embarrassed.gif
Pendaric
It's a living. Cos it could go anywhere.
I like Endgame too but perhapes can guess plot tree possibilities easier hence my choice.
Birth is solidly written and a good platform for continuation but I think a little more personality needs to show through the suffering for me to empathies and want to follow the central character.
Would love to see WHO that man is though if he should survive and recover.
Great work but am going for It's a living.
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